“So shall I dare to give him shape and hue,
And bring his mazy-running tricks to view;
From humbug’s minions catch the scattered rays,
That in one focus they may brightly blaze.
“I’d give our (nameless) knight, before he starts,
A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts;
An oily tongue, which word should never speak
To call a blush to Satan’s brazen cheek;
With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move,
Which lung-quiescent ... might approve;
A changing face, which e’en might Homer feign,
A ton of brass for every ounce of brain.
“Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rage
Through the thin shams of this enlightened age;
To tell the people they are lords of earth,
And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth;
Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses,
And sense deal out in homeopathic doses;
And making goodness to his projects bend,
With all right aims an ultra spirit blend.
·······
“He leagues with those who number in their trade
A falsehood told for every sixpence made;
To Mammon mortgage all they have of heart,
To keep their wealth, with priceless honor part.
The fear of God the smallest of their fears,
Rolling in wealth, but bankrupt in ideas;
To save their purse, their souls contented lose,
And count all right, if worldly gain accrues;
Who, when they die, no memory leave behind,
But in the curses of their cheated kind!
“With these Sir Humbug riches seeks to gain,
And feels his way through lab’rinths of chicane;
Embezzles, swindles, lies, until at last
The eye of Justice on his crime is cast,
When, drugged with wealth, he quits our plundered shore,
And Texas boasts one fiery hero more.”
THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE.
The worst specimen of a travelling doctor I ever knew first appeared at R., one of the principal towns of Vermont, a few years ago. His name was Mariam; or that was what he called himself. He was a Canadian by birth, about twenty-five years of age, short, dark-complexioned, and claimed to be the seventh son of somebody. He was very illiterate, not being able to write a prescription, or his name, for that matter, when he came to R.
MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR.
I visited his rooms at the hotel, after he had been in town some weeks, and noticed, among other things, that his table was strewn with sheets of paper, upon which he had been practising writing his signature. He opened here boldly. He sent out thousands of circulars in the various trains of cars running from R., distributing them in person, on the Poor Richard’s principle, that “if you want your work done, do it; if not, send.” He inserted cards in the two village papers, containing the most illiterate and preposterous statements, and hundreds flocked to see him. Imagine his knowledge, for he assured me, to whom he opened his heart in confidence, that he never read a page of a medical work in his life.
He first claimed to cure by the laying on of hands; but as he possessed no magnetic powers, he gradually abandoned that deception. As he could not write a prescription, and knew nothing of compounding medicines, he would go with a patient to a druggist’s, and looking over the names of drugs on the bottles exposed on the shelves, order two or three articles at random, and, as one druggist assured me, of the most opposite properties; such as tincture of iron and iodide of potash, etc. (Note. The acid in the M. Tinct. iron sets the iodine free.)